The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

By Martha Menchaca

A historical overview of Mexican Americans' social and economic experiences in Texas

For hundreds of years, Mexican Americans in Texas have fought against political oppression and exclusion—in courtrooms, in schools, at the ballot box, and beyond. Through a detailed exploration of this long battle for equality, this book illuminates critical moments of both struggle and triumph in the Mexican American experience.

Martha Menchaca begins with the Spanish settlement of Texas, exploring how Mexican Americans’ racial heritage limited their incorporation into society after the territory’s annexation. She then illustrates their political struggles in the nineteenth century as they tried to assert their legal rights of citizenship and retain possession of their land, and goes on to explore their fight, in the twentieth century, against educational segregation, jury exclusion, and housing covenants. It was only in 1967, she shows, that the collective pressure placed on the state government by Mexican American and African American activists led to the beginning of desegregation. Menchaca concludes with a look at the crucial roles that Mexican Americans have played in national politics, education, philanthropy, and culture, while acknowledging the important work remaining to be done in the struggle for equality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781477324394

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The Texas Bookshelf

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The publication of this book was made possible

by the generous support of the following:

Christine and Charles Aubrey

Roger W. Fullington

Jeanne and Mickey Klein

Marsha and John Kleinheinz

Lowell H. Lebermann Jr.

Joyce and Harvey Mitchell

Brad and Michele Moore

Office of UT President William Powers Jr.

Ellen and Ed Randall

Jean and Dan Rather

Tocker Foundation

Judith Willcott and Laurence Miller

Suzanne and Marc Winkelman

The Mexican American Experience in Texas

Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality

MARTHA MENCHACA

University of Texas Press

Austin

Copyright © 2022 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

First edition, 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Menchaca, Martha, author.

Title: The Mexican American experience in Texas : citizenship, segregation, and the struggle for equality / Martha Menchaca.

Other titles: Texas bookshelf.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2022. | Series: The Texas bookshelf | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021010737 (print) | LCCN 2021010738 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2437-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2438-7 (library e-book)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2439-4 (non-library e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: 973/.046872. | Mexican Americans—Political activity—Texas—History. | Mexican Americans—Texas—History.

Classification: LCC F395.M5 M455 2022 (print) | LCC F395.M5 (ebook) | DDC 976.4/0046872—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010737

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010738

doi:10.7560/324370

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

MARGARET MEAD, ANTHROPOLOGIST

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

DOLORES HUERTA, UNITED FARM WORKERS ACTIVIST

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.

JOSEPH HELLER, NOVELIST

Contents

Introduction

1. The Pobladores and the Casta System

2. New Racial Structures: Citizenship and Land Conflicts

3. Violence and Segregation, 1877–1927

4. Challenging Segregation, 1927–1948

5. The Path to Desegregation, 1948–1962

6. Institutional Desegregation, Social Movement Pressures, and the Chicano Movement

7. Mexican American Social Mobility and Immigration

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendixes

Notes

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Index

Introduction

This book offers a historical overview of Mexican Americans’ social and economic experiences in Texas from the Spanish period to the present. My aim is to focus on the political struggles that Mexican Americans faced in their pursuit of equal rights after Texas joined the United States. As I develop this narrative, I examine major turning points in the advancement, denial, or reversal of their civil rights quest by revisiting events that had statewide impact on their lives.¹

The narrative begins with the settlement of Texas during the Spanish and Mexican periods because it is necessary to look at who initially colonized the territory and how their ancestry influenced their incorporation into US society. Spanish and Mexican census records indicate that most settlers were a racially mixed people of Indian, Spanish, and African descent and that they were governed by a numerically small, elite white population. I argue that the mixed racial heritage of the Mexican American population affected the types of opportunities they were extended by Texas governments after independence. In 1836, Anglo-American immigrants who had settled in Texas broke away from Mexico and established the Republic of Texas. A few years later, Texas was annexed by the United States. Over the generations, and until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Mexican Americans remained an ethnic minority population distinguished by their ancestral origin and mixed racial heritage. Treated as second-class citizens, they were not extended the political rights and social privileges enjoyed by Anglo-Americans.²

The two main political struggles that Mexican Americans endured were how to assert their legal rights of citizenship and how to retain possession of their Spanish and Mexican land grants. Land and citizenship were interrelated social issues: if Mexican Americans were denied citizenship, their legal rights over property could be nullified. By the turn of the twentieth century, the fact that they were US citizens was no longer being questioned. Unfortunately, they continued to be treated as second-class citizens subjected to legal and social segregation. Under US law at the time, segregation was not seen as a violation of a person’s constitutional rights. The US Supreme Court, in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) and in subsequent decisions, ruled that state legislatures had the authority to determine what actions could be considered a violation of a person’s civil rights. In Texas, it was not illegal to segregate Mexican Americans and African Americans from white people in public accommodations. The first exclusion law affecting Mexican Americans was affirmed by the Texas Supreme Court in 1885, and in 1907 such laws were expanded by the Texas Legislature to cover all forms of public accommodation. Allegedly, the intent of Texas’s exclusion laws was to protect citizens’ rights to operate their establishments as they pleased. By law, business owners and members of organizations and clubs could exclude any person from the use of their facilities or confine patrons to restricted areas. The outcome of Texas’s exclusion laws led many white residents to intentionally embarrass, mock, and deny services to Mexican Americans and African Americans.

From the 1920s to the mid-1950s, the Texas Legislature passed additional laws to separate Mexican Americans and African Americans from Anglo-Americans in residential districts and schools. Zoning laws, home rule authority, language policies, housing covenants, and cultural backgrounds were used to implement this separation. In the late 1920s, Mexican American parents in Del Rio, Texas, challenged the unfair treatment of their children in the town’s Mexican schools. After a series of confrontations over school finances, the parents sued the local school board, and in 1930 their lawsuit reached the Texas Appellate Court in San Antonio. The judges ruled that separating students by ethnicity and race did not violate state law. In Independent School District v. Salvatierra, the court upheld the right of school boards to segregate Mexican students. Mexican Americans nonetheless repeatedly challenged segregation laws and policies by appealing to the courts or to the governor’s office. Unfortunately, the court system continued to affirm that Texas’s exclusion laws did not violate federal or state laws (see, for example, Terrell Wells Swimming Pool v. Rodriguez [1944]). By the end of World War II, LULAC and the American GI Forum had emerged as the leading Mexican American civil rights organizations challenging the legal basis for segregating Mexican Americans.

During the late 1940s, fighting the state’s exclusion laws, particularly regarding education, continued to be the main political struggle of Mexican Americans. Many Mexican schools did not offer a curriculum above the fourth or sixth grade, and this prevented Mexican American students from receiving the education necessary to qualify for high school admission. Because civil rights activists identified school segregation as the most severe problem affecting the social mobility of Mexican Americans, I provide an overview of the main cases that challenged Texas laws and eventually led to school reform. Of particular significance was the milestone legal victory against school segregation in 1948, an effort headed by Gustavo Gus García, who worked with Dr. George I. Sánchez and other LULAC and GI Forum activists. In Delgado v. Bastrop Independent School District, García was able to prove that Mexican American students were being segregated on account of their ethnicity and that this policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because no federal or state law required this separation. Judge Ben Rice instated a statewide order requiring Texas schools attended by white and Mexican American students to be desegregated within one year. But the state legislature disregarded the judge’s mandate and continued to segregate and underfund Mexican schools.

The disassembling of Texas exclusion laws began in the post–World War II era when national social movements to desegregate the United States were launched by minority groups and liberal whites. President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces in 1948, a time when Congress and most state legislatures did not support such a change. Nonetheless, civil rights activists across the nation, including those in Texas, continued their quest for equality. By the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement had strengthened, gaining massive national support and influencing many Americans to work toward dismantling segregation and other prejudicial practices. Civil rights advocates placed substantial political pressure on the federal government to set up a legal framework and a system of financial penalties to stop state governments from enforcing discriminatory laws against racial minorities. In Texas, the legislature initially refused to implement the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed into law. Consequently, Mexican Americans and African Americans collectively placed pressure on the legislature to begin dismantling segregation. In 1967, Mexican American youth in Texas, working together with civil rights activists across the Southwest, took the lead in challenging social inequities affecting their communities. Their collective agenda and organizational activities came to be known as the Chicano Movement. MAYO, the Mexican American Youth Organization, and La Raza Unida Party (RUP), an official third party, became the leading organizations representing the Chicano Movement in Texas.

In 1967, Governor John Connally acknowledged that many Texas laws were in violation of the Civil Rights Act, and he asked the Texas Legislature to begin desegregating the state. Within a few months of the governor’s call, all state buildings except schools were desegregated. Furthermore, all policies that used race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion to deny people government services were cancelled. Neither the governor nor the legislature, however, was prepared to end Texas’s exclusion laws affecting the private sector. Two years later, after a large number of Texans demanded the extension of Civil Rights Act protections to the private sector, segregation theoretically ended. Sadly, many schools remained segregated for another thirty years, and employment mobility for African Americans and Mexican Americans did not make significant progress until the early 1980s.

Nonetheless, it was a significant change when segregation in public accommodations ended in Texas. Racial discrimination was prohibited by law, and as a result of new laws, a social process began that transformed how space was inhabited. Race, ethnicity, religion, and national origin could no longer be used to determine or regulate the interaction of people of different races and cultures. Shared public places were no longer locations of inequality where one group was to acquiesce in the demands of allegedly superior others. As the rules of interaction changed in public places, modes of correct social comportment mutated and came to influence the socialization of people’s behavior, which, for later generations, culminated in helping many people accept or embrace difference as a fact of life and not a marker of superiority or inferiority.

The advancements made in the sharing of public spaces, however, did not end the civil rights struggles facing Mexican Americans. School finance, election redistricting boundaries, and racial profiling are the most serious challenges that Mexican Americans have had to address in the twenty-first century. These issues became entangled with immigration politics in Texas. Economic problems in Mexico led to increased immigration to the United States during the early 1980s and mid-1990s. For many Americans, this was an unwelcome demographic change, and it triggered the formation of social movements to reduce immigration from Mexico, specifically unauthorized migration. In many cities anti-immigrant sentiments evolved into anti-Latino movements.

This book was commissioned by the University of Texas Press as part of the Texas Bookshelf Project, a work in progress that will include over a dozen books exploring Texas’s history and cultures. My charge was to write about the culture and history of Mexican Americans in Texas from the settlement of the territory to the present. Because of the large scope of the book and the time period to be covered, it became necessary to concentrate on major events shaping the national and statewide experiences of Mexican Americans in Texas. I did not want to write an encyclopedia of unrelated accounts about the life of either wealthy Mexican Americans or unsung heroes. My aim, rather, was to write about political and social acts that determined or changed the course of Mexican American history. Specifically, I wanted to understand how Mexican Americans challenged segregation and how their political rights as citizens evolved over time. These two issues were interrelated.

Previous research had made me aware of the abundant archival data that were available and, so far, have not been adequately studied. My goal, therefore, was to draw on both the findings of well-known studies and the richness of archival sources to contribute new insights into Texas history. In the area of segregation, I wanted to better understand how the exclusion of Mexican Americans was justified and masked by governmental officials under the public rationale that Mexicans were discriminated against because of social class differences, not racism. Of particular significance were the Spanish casta (legal racial system) census records, which provide indispensable information about Mexican Americans’ racial background and reveal how the mestizaje (racial mixture) process evolved in Texas. Likewise, I wanted to know what Representative José Antonio Navarro heard during the annexation convention of 1845, when many legislators were not in favor of extending US citizenship to Mexicans.

Equally important was to study the depositions in Delgado v. Bastrop ISD (1947, 1948) in order to understand why Gus García had to ask school district superintendents to explain why they decided to educate Mexican American students in shacks, while white students were placed in classrooms in modern brick buildings with indoor bathrooms and water fountains. Compared with the summary accounts found in the published case reports, these depositions contain much more information about the abuse that students underwent. In those depositions, I found the reason why García passionately dedicated his life to fight for social justice, despite the difficult life he had to lead for challenging savage inequalities. For many years, I had wondered why he took that path when, as a member of the Mexican American elite, he could have easily assimilated and used his education to generate income and fund a life of luxury. People like García, who could phenotypically pass for Anglo-American, chose to fight and change Texas’s discriminatory laws instead of acquiescing in their imposition in exchange for personal gain.

In writing this book, I also wanted to capture part of the daily life of Mexican Americans during the nineteenth century. To do so, I found valuable information in legal cases that established state-level precedents defending Mexican Americans’ property and civil rights. For example, Antonio De La Garza’s and Fernando De León’s court records review Texas’s land grant history, but also—and this is much more noteworthy—give insight into the terror and violence their families experienced when they stood up for their rights and refused to be run out of town.

In sum, I hope that this book will provide valuable insights into the history of Mexican Americans in Texas and illustrate how they fought for equality and to make Texas a place where diversity is appreciated and not feared. The case studies and events are offered to promote critical thinking, in the hope of dispelling stereotypes about how things came to be in Texas—my aim being to help readers overcome popular beliefs that depict Mexican Americans as foreigners who have not contributed to the betterment and progress of the state.

CHAPTER 1

The Pobladores and the Casta System

When chronicling the main events affecting Mexican Americans’ political struggles for social and economic equality in Texas, it is essential to first examine their racial formation, which occurred in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. This early phase provides the foundation for understanding how Mexican Americans’ mixed racial heritage affected their incorporation into American society after the United States acquired Mexico’s northern frontier in the mid-nineteenth century. Mexican Americans are descendants of the Indigenous populations of Mexico and the Spaniards who conquered them. Some Mexican Americans are also descendants of enslaved African people brought to Mexico during the transatlantic slave trade.

To keep the conquered population under control and to give themselves economic privileges, Spaniards designed a legal system called the Sistema de Castas (casta system). This legal structure gave them superior economic rights and social privileges while severely constraining the livelihood of Indigenous and racially mixed people. As the Spanish Empire expanded its territorial conquest of Mexico northward, the casta system prompted the large-scale settlement of present-day Texas. The settlers who migrated to Texas were a racially diverse population seeking land and fortune. Most of them were people of color in search of a better life, since social conventions on the frontier allowed significant social mobility within the casta system. This chapter offers an overview of how Spain’s racial order encouraged Indians, Spaniards, mestizos, and people of African descent to migrate north in search of social and economic opportunities. It concludes with the end of the Spanish period, when Mexicans united to obtain their independence from Spain.

The Spanish Colonization of Mexico and the Move North to Texas

Scholars estimate the size of the Native American population in what today is Mexico and the United States at around 30 to 37 million before European contact, with most of them residing in Mexico. Mexico’s central region, where the Aztecs established an empire, is estimated to have had around 25 million people before contact.¹ North of the Rio Grande, population estimates for the United States range from 1 million to 18 million, with the lower estimate considered to be unreliable.²

In 1518, Spain came into contact with the Indians of southern Mexico, and Hernán Cortés, the captain general of the Spanish forces, through war and treaties, established alliances with many kingdoms.³ The confederation of nation-states that constituted the Aztec Empire politically controlled central Mexico. In 1521, after three years of warfare, Cortés’s forces and Indian allies defeated the Aztecs. Nearly two decades later, the Maya nations of the Yucatán, who had also chosen to fight the Spanish, were defeated.

The Indians of northern Mexico, more difficult to conquer, resisted for several decades. Six Chichimeca nation-states formed a military alliance to deter the advancement of the invading forces.⁴ In 1591, the Spanish finally defeated the people of the Gran Chichimeca.⁵ The fall of the Chichimeca is significant for the history of Texas because their conquest by the Spaniards opened new pathways to the North. The first Spanish colony in Mexico’s farthest northern frontier was founded in 1598 by Juan de Oñate, and the province was named New Mexico. Oñate led a colony of Spaniards, Indians, mestizos, and two enslaved African males, numbering altogether 348 men plus their families. They first settled among the Pueblo peoples in an Indian village called Caypa Pueblo (Ohkay Owingeh), later renamed San Juan de Los Caballeros, and a few months later established more settlements.⁶

In 1680, the settlers were forced to leave New Mexico after Pueblo and Apache Indians united to expel them, an event known as the Pueblo Revolt. Two thousand colonists and 317 of their Pueblo allies fled southward and settled near the mission of Nuestra Senõra de Guadalupe, in a small settlement called El Paso del Norte.⁷ When they arrived, they gave life to the sparsely populated village by establishing new settlements and mission communities. Among these settlements were present-day Ciudad Juárez and El Paso Valley. Following a series of disputes between Apache and Pueblo leaders, a group of Pueblo Indians negotiated a treaty with the Spanish to remove the Apache from New Mexico. In 1692, a Spanish-Pueblo military alliance reconquered New Mexico, and Spain maintained control of the province until the early nineteenth century. El Paso del Norte remained part of New Mexico during the Spanish period and El Paso Valley was not incorporated into Texas until the United States acquired Mexico’s northern frontier.

The reconquest of New Mexico was part of a large-scale initiative to colonize the northern frontier of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the name given to modern Mexico. Two additional colonization projects had been initiated to expand the Spanish Empire into present-day Texas and into the Arizona-Sonora region. The colonization of Texas was put into action a few years after France challenged Spain’s claim to New Spain’s northeastern frontier.⁸ Louis IV, the king of France, commissioned René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle in 1684 to explore the Gulf of Mexico and establish a French colony.⁹ Spain feared that if La Salle was successful, France might establish colonies along the Texas coast.

In 1688, Don Gaspar de la Cerda Sandoval Silva y Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain, was commissioned by Charles II, the king of Spain, to begin settling Texas. The viceroy appointed Father Damián Mazanet and four other Franciscan friars to explore the northeastern part of the territory and establish a mission among the Hasinai Indians.¹⁰ Captain Alonso de León and a party of soldiers accompanied Father Mazanet to the northeastern border of present-day Texas and Louisiana. They left Monclova, Coahuila, on March 20, 1690, and within a few weeks arrived at a Hasinai village called Nabedache, where they set up camp and established two missions nearby.¹¹ If the settlement succeeded, colonists and troops would soon follow.

The first attempt to settle Texas failed, however, when Father Mazanet and the other missionaries were unable to live off the land or acquire aid from the local Indians. They left nearly three years later, after France no longer posed a threat to Spain’s claim over Texas. By then, La Salle’s colony had collapsed. The Karankawa Indians had attacked La Salle’s fort and killed most of the French settlers. In mid-March 1689, British intelligence agents reported news of the colony’s demise. Spanish explorers later confirmed it when they found the fort in ruins. The survivors were found by Spanish troops hiding in bushes and nearly starving. The French colonists were sent to Mexico City, where they recounted tales of disorder, starvation, and other problems.¹²

The First Spanish Settlements in Texas

With the French threat diminished, it was no longer necessary for the Spanish to establish a colony in northeastern Texas, and Spain reverted to its earlier settlement plan. New forts and villages were to be established within two days’ travel from a populated settlement so that military assistance could be sent if they came under attack. Three missions and a fort were established between 1700 and 1703, five miles south of the Rio Grande in a region that came to be known as the San Juan Bautista complex.¹³ The missionaries formed amicable relations with the local Indians, and a large number of Coahuiltecan Indians formed alliances with the missionaries.¹⁴

Within a few years, the French resumed their plans to colonize Texas. In 1714, French agents were sent to explore the Texas coast and establish a colony near the Red River on what today is the Louisiana-Texas border. Having gained the confidence of some Caddo Indians, the French established a village near them, called Natchitoches. When the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church learned of the Caddo-French alliance, they immediately made plans to move the financial resources of the San Juan missions into the interior of Texas close to Natchitoches. They hoped to set up a large settlement composed of missions and villages that would stretch westward from the Arroyo Hondo near Natchitoches toward the Neches River, in the same location where the earlier northern missions had been built. Because Spanish officials were aware that establishing a settlement in a distant area was risky, they tried to ensure that it was well financed and that the colonists were equipped to survive on their own. In mid-February 1716, Captain Domingo Ramón took approximately seventy-eight colonists into the northeastern part of Texas.¹⁵ Twenty-five soldiers accompanying the captain were encouraged to bring their families. Four months later, several missions and a presidio with a civilian settlement had been established five miles west of the Neches River and approximately thirteen miles from Natchitoches. The colony eventually came to be known as Los Adaes. Among the colonists were mestizos, Indians, Spaniards and one Black person.¹⁶ The colonists lived in the presidio (military headquarters) and on its outskirts, and the fathers lived in the five missions that they had established nearby. Under Spanish law, missions were to be located apart from civilian settlements and used to attract local Indians. The separation was to ensure that conflicts between the civilians and Indian allies did not destabilize the colony. Spain had learned from previous experience that colonies in the northern frontier failed when settlers and mission Indians lived together. Disputes often erupted over land and water rights and culminated in Indian revolts. In Texas, the sensitivity of the colonization project meant that this mistake could not be repeated. To befriend local Indians and recruit them to live in the missions, Indians from the San Juan Bautista missions were carefully selected to act as the fathers’ guides, negotiators, and assistants.

Within a year, life in the colony became unbearable, even though most of the colonists were frontier people accustomed to living in hostile regions. Local Indians were hostile, and the soldiers believed that the French in Natchitoches were inciting the Indians to attack them. To help fortify the region, Spanish officials in Mexico City decided to establish a network of settlements in Texas. Preparations to found a second colony in present-day San Antonio began. In 1718, Martín de Alarcón, the governor of Coahuila and Texas, was told to recruit settlers and establish a civilian colony. A mission was to be established by Father Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares, who was in charge of developing the mission system in San Antonio. Both Alarcón and Olivares planned to populate San Antonio with white Spanish settlers, but soon found that it was mainly people of color who were willing to make the journey from the interior of Mexico. The only white persons would be the missionaries and some of the Spanish soldiers. Once Alarcón had recruited seventy-two settlers, he prepared to march north. In his letters to the viceroy of New Spain, Alarcón described the settlers as mulattos (Spanish-Black), lobos (Black-Indian), coyotes (Indian-mulatto), and mestizos from Coahuila.¹⁷ Among them were artisans and masons who had been hired to construct buildings in San Antonio. Because of the small size of the colony and the risks associated with its protection, the civilians had to be governed by a military administration.¹⁸

When all the recruits were assembled, Alarcón separated the settlers into two companies, with the governor leading the civilians, and Olivares the mission Indians. On their arrival in San Antonio, the Indians were to be housed apart from the colonists and placed under the governance of Olivares. Two missionaries and five Indians were appointed to help him manage the mission community and recruit local Indians.¹⁹ In late April 1718, the settlers arrived in San Antonio, and Alarcón selected the location for the settlements a few days later. On May 1, Mission San Antonio de Valero was founded, and four days later they established the Villa de Béxar, which contained a civilian settlement and a military presidio.²⁰ The mission later became the present site of the Alamo, and the complex of settlements formed the foundation of San Antonio. By 1720, San Antonio had a colonial population of three hundred, along with several hundred mission Indians.²¹ The population of the villa and mission grew after the fathers made alliances with several Coauhiltecan ranchería (village) chiefs. The alliances were beneficial to both sides.²² The Indians helped protect the mission from hostile Indians, and Indian allies obtained food and commodities from the fathers. Some of the chiefs chose to relocate their rancherías near the mission, and some families chose to live inside the mission grounds.

While the residents of San Antonio managed to do well, Governor Alarcón received news that the French planned to attack the northeastern settlements.²³ Numerous letters from the settlements corroborated that information—many settlers were desperate to leave. Alarcón ordered the civilians of Los Adaes to temporarily seek refuge in San Antonio. Faced with such grave problems, the viceroy of New Spain knew that he had to find a benefactor who would be willing to fortify and expand the settlements in that region. In 1719, José de Azlor y Virto de Vera, known as the Marqués de Aguayo, was named governor and captain general of the province of Coahuila and Texas. He had the financial resources and determination to fortify the Northeast and end the French threat.

Two years later, Aguayo began the reconquest of the Northeast. In mid-July 1721, he departed Monclova, Coahuila, with the goal of ousting the French and forcing them to retreat eastward toward Natchitoches.²⁴ Equipped with numerous cannons and a large amount of artillery, his battalion, composed of several hundred men, easily forced the French to retreat to Natchitoches and agree to a truce.²⁵

Once the French had left Los Adaes, Aguayo sent news to San Antonio for the colonists to return and join the mission fathers, who had not left the embattled region. In preparation for the refugees’ return, Aguayo left one hundred soldiers and six cannons to protect the colony. Twenty-eight of the soldiers were commissioned to send for their families, in an effort to increase the number of settlers. Near the mission of San Miguel de Los Adaes, Aguayo established the Presidio de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Los Adaes. One additional mission and presidio were also established in the old encampment zone. Altogether, six missions and two well-fortified presidios were established, and Los Adaes was named the capital of Texas.²⁶

Aguayo next tried to deter any further French attempts to settle the central Texas coast. Two previous French attempts to claim the area had failed.²⁷ After resting for the winter in San Antonio, Aguayo erected a military outpost on Matagorda Bay. In 1722, his troops founded Presidio Nuestra Señora de Loreto and established Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga nearby.²⁸ Nine soldiers were left to protect the area. Four years later, the settlements were moved inland near the Guadalupe River, and a new mission was established. The presidio was renamed Presidio Nuestra Señora de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo, and the region came to be known as La Bahía. By 1763, the missions had an Indian population of 312 and a colonial population of 50 families.²⁹

Aguayo’s actions brought stability to Texas. The fortification of San Antonio, La Bahía, and Los Adaes proved that Texas could be settled, and this convinced formerly reluctant people to choose the region as their home. In 1749, José de Escandón led one of the largest land movements in the history of the northern frontier, and many chose present-day South Texas as their home. Escandón established Nuevo Santander along the current border between Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Six thousand people were recruited, and over twenty-three towns were established. Laredo was founded in 1755, and hundreds of settlers established ranches in what today is South Texas. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Laredo had over 718 settlers, and the towns and ranches in Nuevo Santander grew to over 20,000 colonial inhabitants.³⁰

The Evolution of the Casta System in New Spain

While the Spanish Empire expanded in New Spain, the Crown’s administrators instituted a racial order providing them with superior social and legal rights. Spaniards, who consisted of peninsulares born in Europe, and criollos, who were American born, governed the overseas colonies, while Indians and racially mixed people had limited political and social privileges. This social-racial hierarchy was initially shaped by intermarriage and war. By the mid-1570s, Spain had replaced the governing Indigenous elites, who had resisted the new regime, with faithful Native rulers. For decades following the conquest, to obtain the confidence and allegiance of the Indigenous people, the Crown and the church encouraged the intermarriage of Spanish soldiers with Indigenous women. Once the insurrection movements ended, however, the Crown discouraged viceroys, governmental officials, and their families from marrying Indians. Intermarriage was to proceed, but only among the commoner colonial groups, whose children came to constitute the racially mixed casta groups.³¹

New Spain’s Sistema de Castas (casta system) evolved from Spain’s Limpieza de Sangre (purity of blood) legal system, which dated back to the fifteenth century.³² In Spain, Spaniards of Jewish and Muslim descent were prohibited from obtaining high-level appointments within secular, ecclesiastical, or royal governments. It was believed that these kinds of people were sullied by their non-Christian ancestry, and they were considered untrustworthy subjects who might revert to their idolatrous religions. To ensure that high-level occupations and appointments were not given to heretics, an applicant had to provide proof of purity of blood, consisting of a genealogical study and witnesses who could confirm the applicant’s family history. This discriminatory social practice was transported to the overseas colonies, with racial exclusions added. People of Indigenous and African descent became part of the banned populations.

The first law distinguishing Spaniards from people of color was adopted by King Philip II in 1568. It stipulated that Blacks, mulattos (Spanish-Black), and mestizos (Spanish-Indian) were prohibited from carrying arms unless given a dispensation by the royal government.³³ A few years later, the king introduced a series of laws that, according to scholars, signified the institutionalization of the Sistema de Castas, which was used to maintain people of color in a subordinate position.³⁴ The laws prohibited those of mixed racial heritage from becoming municipal magistrates or public notaries, or from holding any title of authority over Indians.³⁵ The king also ordered that people of mixed African and Indian heritage pay a special tax in order to remain part of the free population.³⁶ Under Spain’s Siete Partidas (seven divisions) laws, the children of enslaved males married to Indian and mestiza women obtained the legal status of their mothers, that is, the children were born free. The Siete Partidas laws, however, were not extended to enslaved women, and a child of a female slave was born a slave.³⁷ Racial labels were used to distinguish people who were free and racially mixed, such as mulatto, pardo (black mixture), or morisco (child of a mulatto and a white person), whereas slaves were generally referred to as negros regardless of their ancestry.³⁸ To maintain a record of people’s racial lineage, parish priests and municipal governments were required to register the race of those issued marriage and baptismal certificates, or of a person of African descent who settled in a community.

In 1582, Philip II extended the occupational restrictions and ordered the viceroy of New Spain to ascertain that Spaniards born in the New World seeking high-level appointments and occupations were not mestizos or mulattos. Limpieza de Sangre certificates were required, and exemptions were given only to sons born from legitimate marriages between conquerors and women of noble Indigenous ancestry.³⁹ Under the Sistema de Castas, people who were of mixed racial heritage were called castas. Because it was important to enforce the racial decrees, especially at the highest levels, royal administrators and clergy from the Holy Inquisition Office were charged with investigating complaints and enforcing the mandates.

By this time, the Catholic Church had established its own casta policies. Indians were prohibited from joining the Franciscan orders in 1525, and forty years later, Indians and racially mixed people were banned from the priesthood altogether.⁴⁰ Exemptions, however, were permitted for meritorious men of Indian descent if they spoke Indian languages and were born from legitimate marriages.

Following the royal decrees, secular institutions began placing Limpieza de Sangre restrictions on many occupations, prohibiting castas and Indians from joining guilds. If the guilds hired Indians or castas, they were restricted to journeyman roles.⁴¹ Spaniards controlled the municipal governments, and it was common for hereditary or Limpieza de Sangre statutes to be adopted in order to prevent nonwhites from holding office.⁴² Municipal governments in turn passed local laws reserving some occupations for Spaniards.

The municipal laws and practices blocking mestizos and people of African heritage from local government did not affect Indians, since in 1571 they were banned from participating by royal order.⁴³ Under the República de Indios laws, Indigenous communities were to form their own municipal governments and select their representatives and judges.⁴⁴ They were also required to pay annual tribute on the harvests and goods they produced, and if they lived in missions or corregimientos (land grant communities) they were told what crops to grow.⁴⁵ To prevent mestizos and people of African heritage from interfering in the political life of Indian communities, by law they were prohibited from living in Indian pueblos.⁴⁶ Indigenous people, however, were permitted to live and work in Spanish towns, where most of them were employed as servants.⁴⁷

In the early 1600s, institutions adopted additional exclusionary laws against Indians and people of mixed descent. By 1630, universities had barred Indians, mestizos, and mulattos of illegitimate birth from attending, and occupations in many cities were closed to them in hospitals, accounting offices, and the royal lottery office.⁴⁸ The Holy Inquisition Office ten years earlier had tried to impose similar restrictions on criollos, but King Philip IV vetoed the proposal. Administrators had advised the king that criollos should not be appointed to high-level offices because most of them were racially mixed. Allegedly, they were submitting fraudulent papers to prove that they were not of Indian or African descent.⁴⁹

Oddly, the occupational exclusions and college-admission bans occurred during the period when opportunities within the military opened for Black males.⁵⁰ Additional Black units were needed to catch runaway slaves and to help oversee the Black population, which had grown tremendously during the height of the transatlantic slave trade, especially in the coastal cities. Black men had participated in the military since the mid-sixteenth century, but their numbers were few because of the cost of enlisting.⁵¹

The Black population in Mexico increased after a series of epidemics in central Mexico radically reduced the number of Indigenous people during the mid-1570s. Scholars estimate that the Indigenous population of central Mexico fell from 25 million (precontact) to around 2.8 million, and possibly as low as 1.3 million.⁵² The ongoing population decline created a tremendous labor shortage for the peninsular elite, who had been given enormous land grants. As the Indigenous population plummeted, the Spanish Crown authorized slave traders to bring more captives to Mexico. Within sixty years after the epidemics spread, approximately 150,000–200,000 African people had been forcibly brought to Mexico.⁵³ But in 1630, King Philip IV canceled most commercial slave-trading licenses, since the Indigenous population had rebounded.⁵⁴

In 1714, the Bourbons took control of Spain after Charles II died without leaving any descendants to inherit the Spanish throne.⁵⁵ For over a decade, the Spanish nobility had been divided over whether Philip V, the grandson of Louis XIV of France, should inherit the crown and place the Bourbon dynasty in power, or whether